


Scenes from a Mansion - the cutting-room floor

by spiderweb_wine



Series: Scenes from a Mansion [2]
Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: #coulsonlives, F/M, Gen, M/M, Outtakes, Personal Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-23
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-12 17:26:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderweb_wine/pseuds/spiderweb_wine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I am working on a fic called "Scenes from a Mansion" wherein each of the Avengers, as well as Pepper and Coulson and Fury, get their own scene.  These are the outtakes.  The gag-reel.  The cutting-room floor.  The teaser trailers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> These are the bits that don't quite fit in my almost-finished upcoming "Scenes from a Mansion." These are the misfit orphan scenes. Scenes 6 and 7 were written just after Iron Man and recently rediscovered.
> 
> Each scene will be its own chapter as a way to separate them. 
> 
> Each scene may be AU to the ones before and after it. That's the nature of the cutting-room floor.
> 
> Overarching plot? Please. These are outtakes!

Barton sees him one day, in New York. It's one of the dangers of having a long-standing base there. It's also one of the dangers of, well, Barton. Phil's walking the dog when Barton lands in front of him, letting go of a grappling arrow's tether line. “This your dog?” he asks, smiling. 

A couple of tourists jump and stare. Three locals walk past them without breaking stride. 

Phil doesn't jump. He says, “Neighbour's,” on reflex because the information that he stays with his brother when not on base is highly classified. The information that he _has_ a brother is highly classified. And the information that his brother has a dog is just irrelevant. 

Yet here he is, walking her.

“What's his name?” Barton asks.

“Her,” Phil says, surprised to have something observable over on Barton. “Bailey.”

“Hi, Bailey.” Barton holds his hand out, textbook flat and open, for the dog to inspect. 

“Misuse of SHIELD materials in a non-mission situation, Barton,” Phil says, jerks his head at the grappling arrow's dangling tail.

“Nah, this one's Stark's new experimental model. I'm doing product testing.” 

Phil's eyelid doesn't start twitching. It doesn't.


	2. Chapter 2

“I'm married to my work, sir,” Coulson had said once, mild and impassive, when questioned about girlfriends. 

Clint had laughed for two hours straight until Coulson said, “My office, Barton, _now_ ,” repressively, but when he got there, Coulson had locked the door, grinned, and shut him up with a kiss.


	3. Chapter 3

The thing is, Captain America _**is**_ progressive. Women's rights were taking great steps even before he went into the ice. In his day, Peggy - - 

This week, he has learned that 65% of students entering universities are women. He has seen Maria Hill be Fury's lieutenant and Virginia Potts be Stark's CEO. He has used his shield, his strength to help propel the Black Widow onto a Chitauri flier, and from there she had - - 

The people have made great progress. It is truly inspiring.

So why are computers so hard?


	4. Chapter 4

Thor's only weakness is his emotions. So Loki, hidden in his brother's shadow, learned to manipulate those emotions. 

This doesn't work on Natasha. She was forged in the Red Room, hardened with use. She accepted it long ago. She's reshaped and adapted herself for SHIELD, but she carries no shame for her own past. 

Loki's never met anyone like her. 

(His field of experience is kind of small.)


	5. Chapter 5

Stark shows respect through nicknames. 

When he says, “Clench up, Legolas,” Hawkeye knows he's been accepted despite Loki. He's been accepted by someone who met him in the middle of being mind-raped and has only known the real him for a few hours of fighting time. It's a good testament to 'actions speak louder than words,' or to the questionable character of a socially incongruous billionaire with enough genius to intimidate Director Fury. Or to the weight carried by Natasha's trust. 

(Natasha is the anomaly, but that's not news. God knows Stark has not called Natasha one nickname, or even a double-entendre, since he learned her real identity.) 

It means a lot. It helps a little. 

(Until he finds out that Phil is dead. Then nothing means anything any more. He runs. Runs away from Phil's apartment, from his workplace, from his colleagues and friends. From his memory.)


	6. Chapter 6

Tony isn’t short, but he’s shorter than Obadiah Stane. Sometimes Pepper wears her tallest heels, the ones that make her feet ache in 10 minutes flat, just to see him stretch his spine and put his chin up like he does beside Obadiah at functions. His back hollows out, his shoulders go back, and the fabric of his shirt stretches tight over the reactor faceplate. 

Obadiah would smile at Tony sometimes, wide and indulgent, when Tony wasn’t watching. Smile at Tony’s determination to, to - - Pepper isn’t sure why Tony thinks he needs to compete. 

After Obadiah is dead, she throws out that particular pair of heels.


	7. Chapter 7

He would never say it to Pepper, but Tony’s kind of sorry he freaked her out making her replace his heart. He likes to push people, find out where they’ve drawn the lines for themselves. He found Pepper’s and wishes he hadn’t. Her help had been raw, naked in a way Yinsen’s never had been. The thing is, Tony can replace the reactor himself, if he has to. He’s not stupid; he built that into the design. But for all that he trusts machines more than people, this is one machine he also hates. Hates the sick still weight of it in his ribcage, hates the cold precision of the metal, hates the necessity of carrying it around day after day. Hates all of its implications and complications. 

If someone else helps him replace it he’s less tempted to just sit there in the medical chair with a hole in his chest and his real heart failing until his fingers are too numb to perform the task, until his heart stops and the monitor flatlines and it’s over. 

Pepper would be the one to find him with empty eyes and an empty heart and he’s not sure he wants that, either.


	8. Chapter 8

Tony has thought this one out, actually. His own personal arc reactor is wonderful and awful and dangerously fallible. Flickers can mean death. Probably not today – he's read up on Yinsen's Walking Dead, thanks – but cumulatively. Tony used to think he probably didn't care, but since - - well, recently he's discovered he really does want to live to get old. 

If something goes wrong, as it has too often already, he needs - - 

And he can't - - 

Let's just say a lot of people would do less-than-honourable things to get their hands on the technology bisecting his sternum. He needs someone who - - 

In the end, he goes to Agent Coulson. 

It takes three tries to catch Coulson both awake and alone. 

“Agent,” Tony says.

Coulson raises his eyebrows. The ventilator tube came out a while ago, but everyone has been told he must avoid all forms of excitement and apparently this includes talking. 

“So we already know Fury is a lying liar who lies,” Tony says, and Coulson twitches the fingers of his good hand enough to indicate the chair beside the bed. “But you're not.”

“Only when needed,” Coulson says, and there's a moment where they both listen to the unchanging tempo of the beeping heart monitor. “Never about tasers.”

“Tasers! Good, that's good, Secret Agent Man, I can run with that, it's a little kinky, but Bruce and I can...”

Coulson lifts only one eyebrow, and Tony knows he's going too fast, he usually is, but – when he opens his mouth again, what comes out is, “Coulson. I trust you.”

It takes a lot more effort to actually _say_ , “I need you to keep a spare arc reactor safe for me, just in case,” than it should. But when he finally gets it said, Coulson doesn't flinch, doesn't look away, doesn't react like this is the grossest thing he's ever heard. 

Tony can feel himself rambling again under that steady gaze, nerves getting the best of him until - - Coulson's fingers curl around his elbow, the only part of him that Coulson can really reach, and squeeze, and he shouldn't be exerting himself, and - - 

“Stark,” Coulson says, and for a moment he sounds like Yinsen, and Tony can think again, “it will be done.”

“It can't fall into the wrong - - !”

“I won't let it.”

And Tony, God help him, believes it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized I didn't want Coulson's scene in the main fic to be in the hospital. So this one hit the cutting-room floor.

Phil's silent, sterile-white positive-pressure hospital room is invaded by the entire Avengers team about a week after he's regained consciousness. Phil's not ready – he and Nick have already talked about this, right after they had words – calm, careful words, in deference to Phil's damaged lungs and heart, but words all the same – about Nick's duplicity and tactics, and they had agreed to let his survival be known to all only when he'd been cleared for light desk duty again. So he's not really prepared when he hears voices in the hallway, raised voices. They're close and all he can do before the door opens is touch the button to raise the head of the bed a bit higher. 

Then the door opens and Thor is grinning all over, and Stark looks self-satisfied and also relieved, and Banner is polishing his glasses, and Captain Rogers is explaining something about “Fury” and “lies” and “didn't tell us” and “Jarvis” but Phil's only hearing every third word because he's just spotted Clint and Natasha. 

Clint is hanging back, behind Natasha, with his back to the outer corridor wall, and Natasha is _letting him_. This can only mean that Nick didn't let Barton in on their secret and their agreement. He'd said he would, but he didn't, so they're going to need to have words _again_ , and if Phil hadn't already been watching how Nick operated for the past 20 years, he might be surprised instead of just resigned. He owes SHIELD too much for surprise, or resentment, but it hurts, watching the shocky look on Clint's face through the open door, and that's going to have to be a whole other discussion. 

And Natasha – Natasha is laying out all of her weapons on the small white table beside the door. She moves fast; pressurized rooms alarm if the door is left open too long. Within a few seconds, the tabletop is littered with ways to kill a man – first the knives from her boottops, then from her belt, from her sleeves. The throwing stars at her hip. The garrotte wire. Her Widow's Bite. Both regulation guns and a tiny derringer. A vial of clear liquid. Her fashion-print silk scarf. Her custom-made watch with hidden poison darts. Something that looks like a cellphone and probably isn't. Then her necklace and earrings. Finally, the knife hidden in the twist of her hair. Her hair swings loose about her shoulders as she steps fully through the doorway, as every face in the room turns to her, as everyone except Clint and Phil himself does a double-take. 

Tony says, “Jesus, Romanoff,” and Phil has an abrupt flashback to the night Clint brought Natasha in. Years ago, now. Phil had showed up to Clint's cryptic summons in the dead of night three weeks after both he and his mark had dropped right off the radar. Eliminate the Widow, he'd been told, but he hadn't, and there they were, the Widow standing straight and still under a Moscow streetlamp. Clint had stood almost in shadow, bow and quiver over his shoulder, hands open at his sides. Then she'd moved. She had taken off her coat, then laid all her weapons out on it, one by one, starting with the boottop knives, moving just slow enough that Phil could see her hands, could see that she was _letting_ him see them. More and more items fell onto the coat, silent under the slow, muffling drift of snow, until her necklace came off, and finally a knife out of the coils of her twisted up hair. The yellow of the streetlamp had washed out the red of her loose hair and made deep shadows of her eyes as she stepped forward past the piled-up coat and said, in careful correct English, “My name is Natasha Romanoff. I am the Black Widow. I wish to join the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division in good faith.” 

Behind her, Clint had nodded, and Phil had held out his hand. 

Phil has never harboured any illusions that Natasha unarmed is less dangerous than Natasha fully armed. Not then, not now. 

Natasha has many, many strengths. Visible emotional vulnerability in the presence of others is not one of them. 

She'd done it again, in Puerto Rico, an elaborate show of surrender while Phil wrenched his shoulder against duct tape and bled onto the floor, drip, drip, drip. Then the last knife from her hair had buried itself in the leader's eye socket. “Got what you need?” she'd asked on her way past. He'd nodded, and four minutes later they'd walked out into the night with eleven bodies behind them and her tucking the garrotte wire back into place with steady hands.

In Vienna, she'd laid everything out in the bolt-hole's tiny kitchenette before coming to crouch at Clint's bedside, and by then it meant, I'm safe. You're safe. _We're safe_. 

Now, she steps through the sudden hush in the room. Stark moves out of her way without a word. (Phil could get used to this.) She pulls the visitor's chair beside the bed away from the wall and settles into it, all without a sound. She slides one hand under Phil's free hand, palm to palm, slow and careful so as not to jostle the IV cannula. It's his good hand, the bad one's immobilized in several layers of bandages, tape, and sling, but it still hurts because everything hurts. She doesn't squeeze. She just sits there letting him have the warmth of skin contact, and it's the best he's felt since he woke up and realized _he could still wake up_. A moment later Clint slides into the gap between her chair and the wall. He looks terrible. 

Phil can't really talk, not around the ventilator tube. The team doesn't seem to care. Thor regales them with tales of the team's exploits in Phil's absence. Stark joins in until he relaxes, Captain Rogers is sitting in the far corner chair like he's there for the long haul. Banner prowls along the monitor readouts, examining the data with creases between his eyebrows, but makes no comment. Medical is frighteningly, endlessly competent. The day before, they'd had to change one of his antibiotics, meaning he'll be on the ventilator longer than they thought. And they hadn't been happy when he'd insisted on talking to Nick by actually _talking_. But even here, Phil has lines, and this was one of them. He was NOT writing it out, or typing, or blinking yes and no. Not for Nick. ASL would have needed both hands. Eventually, Medical had caved in and promised him five minutes, mumbling under their collective breath about stitches and strain and complications and pneumonia the entire time. Breathing unassisted had been more effort than he'd expected. It had been worth it, but even Nick had looked worried. 

For the sake of their karma and his own, Phil hasn't fought Medical's opinion on anything since. Bruce doesn't seem upset by their setup. 

He wants to talk now, to say something, anything, to them. He wants to say _sorry_ and _I love you guys_ and _did you all remember Form 92.7(A) in triplicate?_ and _so I discovered Fury's super-secret stage three weapons are based on Asgardian Destroyer fire, Stark, you should get on that_. But Natasha doesn't move to retrieve the whiteboard and marker clipped to the side of the bed. She just sits and lets them all talk around her. Her hand is warm. Phil has to turn his head to see Clint, leaning against the wall behind her shoulder. When he does, Clint is staring like he'll never look away again. 

Phil can't stay awake very long these days. Falling asleep is regrettably inevitable. So maybe he's imagining it that Miss Potts comes in with coffee to lure the rest of them away except for Clint and Natasha. He's probably, definitely, imagining that she winks at him as she gets Thor out of the door with a hand on his arm. 

He's hallucinated already this week. Miss Potts sweet-talking Thor is much preferable to Loki holding the Destroyer gun. 

When he wakes up he needs the next dose of pain meds (whatever they've got him on, he's not looking forward to the withdrawal period). There's sunshine hitting the closed curtains; from the angle, it's morning. There's a nurse in Natasha's chair, frowning over his monitor readouts. There's something under his good hand. 

'Good' is perhaps a relative term. It takes a moment to move his hand far enough to look.

It's an arrowhead.


	10. Chapter 10

"My friends!" Thor booms as he enters the common room. "Join me! Tomorrow I propose we journey together through this celebrated Central Park of yours! Tony has told me epic tales of its illustrious--"

"It's going to rain tomorrow," three voices interrupt in unison. Clint and Bruce grin at each other while Tony smirks. 

"Collarbone?" Clint asks, referring to Bruce's most recent break. 

"No," Bruce says, twisting his hands together. He's not bothered, but he's also not smiling any more. "Left hand, all four fingers. Old break." 

There's a pause while Clint remembers that Bruce's family life was no better than his own. "I broke both arms, in the circus," he volunteers. "Luckily, not at the same time."

Tony taps the blue light seeping through both layers of shirts. "Knowing when it's going to rain is a side bonus of being a genius in a fucking cave. The human chest isn't built to accomodate arc reactors without a few broken bones. Trust me, this is the kind of feature-not-a-bug scenario you want to avoid. You," he points his stylus at Thor, "will just have to go for the high-tech option. Jarvis?" 

"The weather forescast for this area within the next 24 hours is for increasing cloud followed by a 94% chance of precipitation," Jarvis says, smooth. 

Thor frowns.


End file.
